


Into The River

by LookingForDroids



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Brief Smut, Ficlet, Other, POV Second Person, body art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:55:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29766870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForDroids/pseuds/LookingForDroids
Summary: The night before Ascension, and after goodbye.
Relationships: Mallek Adalov/Cirava Hermod
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	Into The River

Everyone wants something different, and everyone has their own reasons for it, from the kids looking for a tattoo of their first moirail’s sign to the rustblood girl with glowing eyes who came in on her Ascension’s eve and asked for _Fuck the Empire_ in steel rivets across the new adult chitin of her back. The jade who wanted their nook pierced and strung with silver chains – you’re pretty sure that’s a _Fuck the Empire_ too. As far as you can tell, the skinny clown who wanted flowers etched into her horns just really liked flowers. You don’t need to know, but you do need to care, for as long as it takes to do the work right. What happens after that doesn’t make any difference to you.

You’ll be shipping out yourself tomorrow, and the place your blood bought you is a respectable one: good potential for advancement, maybe even a command of your own if you play it right. You should be happy about that. Most trolls your caste would be celebrating. You just sit on the roof of your hivestem in the dry dim season heat and watch people pass by below, catching with your artist’s eye the glint of jewelry in streetlight or moonlight, the occasional sheen of ink. You think about the girl with the rivets – treason, sure, but you’re untraceable and she’s long past caring – and then your mind circles back to the image of Cirava with their head resting on folded arms, their back bare beneath your hands and their skin unmarked except by scars. Some trolls hide their stories instead of carving them into their bodies, but everyone’s got them. You don’t want to forget that; you’re sometimes worried you will. 

The last time you saw them, Cirava kissed each of your piercings in sequence – working slowly down from the rings in your horns to the stud in your tongue, catching the thoracic piercings in their sharp teeth, lingering at the juncture of your thighs until they could close their lips around the tiny silver barbell in the forked tip of your bulge. You let them toy with it, closing your eyes, losing yourself for as long as you could in their hot mouth and the twist of their tongue; you held fragrant smoke in your bellowsacs until you found yourself lightheaded and let the weird blippy moisturewave beat carry you along. It rose and fell in languid waves, and when you came, it was with their claws digging into your hips and a mind so hazy with pleasure you barely noticed the change. Maybe that counts as celebration. Maybe it just counts as _goodbye._

You close your eyes again and lift a hand to your ear, where one of the rings is missing. The last time you saw them, Cirava asked for something they could keep. It’s strung on a neon string necklace now, that little piece of you, almost but not quite hidden beneath a mesh shirt, and the hole where it was is one you can’t stop touching. You haven’t decided yet whether to let it heal over or replace it with something new, but it’s going to feel strange for a while, even after conscription takes you away. And then one night – 

Sweat rolls down your neck, and you’re awash in sound, traffic mixing with laser fire and the distant roar of drones; you’re held for a moment in the river’s grip, knowing that you won’t forget this heat or this noise or this absence, but one night, sooner or later, you won’t think about it at all.


End file.
